Globalization

Economic ties between Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) have reached a turning point. In a mere decade, Asia has become LAC's second-largest trading partner. This dynamic trade relationship has boosted LAC's strategic and economic importance to Asia.To expand these gains, governments must play a more decisive role. Their participation is critical in strengthening and balancing the three key pillars of any successful integration initiative: trade, investment, and cooperation. In its four chapters, the report identifies the challenges and opportunities in each of these pillars while drawing attention to the benefits of balancing their development.

We live in a world which is becoming increasingly urban, where more and more people are moving to cities. Over 54 per cent of people across the globe were living in urban areas in 2014 (UN DESA, 2014).1 The current urban population of 3.9 billion is expected to grow in the next few decades to some 6.4 billion by 2050 (ibid.). It is estimated that three million people around the world are moving to cities every week (UN-Habitat, 2009). Migration is driving much of the increase in urbanization, making cities much more diverse places in which to live.
Nearly one in five of the world foreign-born population resides in established global gateway cities (Çağlar, 2014). In many of these cities such as Sydney, London and New York, migrants represent over a third of the population and, in some cities such as Brussels and Dubai, migrants account for more than half of the population.

Recent developments in the world and the strong European commitment to a regulating globalisation argue in favour of a forward looking analysis. “The World in 2025” first underlines the major future trends: geopolitical transformations in terms of population, economic development, international trade and poverty. Secondly, it identifies the likely tensions: natural resources (food, energy, water and minerals), migrations or urbanisation. Finally, it defines possible transitional pathways: towards a new production and consumption model, towards new rural-urban dynamics, towards a new gender and intergenerational balance. “Rising Asia and socio-ecological transition” is the explicit sub-title that could be an inspiring source for the future strategy of the European Union.

This paper describes seven salient features of trade integration in the 21st century: Trade integration has been more rapid than ever (hyperglobalization); it is dematerialized, with the growing importance of services trade; it is democratic, because openness has been embraced widely; it is criss-crossing because similar goods and investment flows now go from South to North as well as the reverse; it has witnessed the emergence of a mega-trader (China), the first since Imperial Britain; it has involved the proliferation of regional and preferential trade agreements and is on the cusp of mega-regionalism as the world's largest traders pursue such agreements with each other; and it is impeded by the continued existence of high barriers to trade in services. Going forward, the trading system will have to tackle three fundamental challenges: In developed countries, the domestic support for globalization needs to be sustained in the face of economic weakness and the reduced ability to maintain social insurance mechanisms. Second, China has become the world’s largest trader and a major beneficiary of the current rules of the game. It will be called upon to shoulder more of the responsibilities of maintaining an open system. The third challenge will be to prevent the rise of mega-regionalism from leading to discrimination and becoming a source of trade conflicts. This paper suggests a way forward — including new areas of cooperation such as taxes — to maintain the open multilateral trading system and ensure that it benefits all countries.

The TREND COMPENDIUM 2030 is a global trend study compiled by Roland Berger Strategy Consultants. It describes seven megatrends that will shape the world over the next 20 years. All trends have a broad impact on how we do business – Therefore, Roland Berger experts have identified corporate actions that companies must take today. The study also takes a look at how we will live in 2030.

Roland Berger experts first screened all relevant trend, scenario and future studies worldwide. Then they verified, analyzed and consolidated the results, using them to define seven megatrends. They next broke down the seven megatrends into 21 subtrends, looking at each from a global perspective and the viewpoints of industrialized and developing countries. Finally, they identified corporate actions that companies worldwide should consider taking today.

Following the executive summary and an introduction in chapters A and B, chapter C presents all trends and corporate actions in detail, while chapter D gives you an idea of life in 2030. In addition, every chapter presents the most important sources, organizations and indicators to help you keep track of the changes in the world as well as dig deeper into the trends presented.